Anticipating that even small incidents of violence against members of the minority community across the country will be held against the Narendra Modi-led government.

Anticipating that even small incidents of violence against members of the minority community across the country will be held against the Narendra Modi-led government, the Sangh Parivar has begun telling readers how the narratives ignore violence against Sangh-affiliated members of the majority community. The Organiser cover story highlights the alleged “series of attacks on RSS and BJP leaders in six states” — Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala — to say that “the secularists, who routinely waste no time to defend the terrorists and anti-nationals when they kill… innocent people anywhere in the country, have gone into the mute mode”, while a “stray incident of violence against a Muslim youth” in Pune became “another [case of] secular mongering against the Modi government”.

“Due to the veil of ‘secularism’, left-liberal-socialist-seculars consider killing of a Muslim youth as a ‘communal’ act while remaining silent over brutal attacks on RSS and BJP workers,” says the cover story titled “Veiled Secularism”.

ISLAMIC CRISIS

The sectarian conflict in Iraq has come as vindication for the Parivar in order to claim the accuracy of its assessment of Islamic countries. It dubs the recent violence in the West Asia as the outcome of a “crisis within Islam”.

The emergence of “new Islamic extremist groups like [the] Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Iraq, Al-Shabab of Somalia gaining ground in Kenya, proliferation of jihadism in Egypt and Syria, etc, highlight a crisis within Islam,” the Organiser editorial says about the civil war in Iraq, adding that “the reality is that Islam is gradually becoming the victim of its own tenets. There are around 73 sects within Islam and each one claims to be the true follower. This inherent intolerance has put Islam not against all other religions but also has led to infighting among Islamic variants”.\

The editorial in Panchjanya, too, echoes the same line, saying that “the massacring groups around Baghdad have raised questions not only about religious terrorism but also about the Islamic system itself. Questions are now being raised against the violent mentality that does not tolerate even different votaries of Sharia law”.

“The only thing common to the Uighur, Uzbek, Afghanistani, Pakistani, Kenyan, Lebanese and Nigerian terrorists is their fundamentalism… It is for the entire world to think how long to tolerate it and where this fundamentalism will take the world…” cautions the Panchjanya editorial.

FOCUS STATES

Buoyed by the BJP’s success in the Hindi heartland states of UP and Bihar in the Lok Sabha elections, the Parivar has begun to sense an opportunity for a saffron surge in these states for the assembly elections too. Reflecting this, the Parivar weeklies are highlighting the alleged maladministration in both states. The Panchjanya has done a cover story on the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government in UP. Claiming “goons unleashed, government on leave”, it accuses the state government of giving a free hand to goons across the state.

An article in the Organiser declares that the recent tactical understanding in Bihar between the JD(U) and the rival RJD is an attempt to take the state backwards: the “probable alliance between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad has been seen as a threat to the development of Bihar. This alliance may deviate [the] state’s progress…” The Organiser calls it a “Nitish-Lalu egoistic alliance”.

SWADESHI COMFORT

Ahead of the Modi government’s first budget, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seems to have been given a free hand by the Parivar. An article in the Organiser seeks to dispel the notions of the “swadeshi” model of economic policy championed by the Parivar: “Swadeshi is meant to be becoming self-reliant but it doesn’t prohibit us from making concessions wherever it is needed in the national interest and foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence is the best example…” The article also declares that “FDI in defence is the need of the hour”.

“There is no harm in working in collaboration with foreign companies in the areas where we lack, but we must not act in a hasty manner,” says the article, claiming that “Swadeshi is a synonym of ‘economic nationalism’ and nationalism can never be wrong or outdated…”